Vicky Ward, Graydon Carter and Ghislaine Maxwell
Virginia Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, filed a lawsuit in 2015 that accused longtime Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell of engaging in sex trafficking by facilitating his sexual encounters with teenage girls. Maxwell has denied the charges and the parties settled out of court in May 2017 (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/20/jeffrey-epstein-related-lawsuit-1229908).
Vicky Ward wrote the Vanity Fair profile on Epstein (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303)
In an interview with Democracy Now on July 8, 2019 (on the Monday after Epstein’s arrest Saturday evening), Ward says she was going to include verifiable testimonials from two sisters who said they were molested by Epstein in her 2003 article, but her then-editor Graydon Carter cut their accounts after Epstein came to his office requesting he do so (https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/8/jeffrey_epstein_a_billionaire_friend_of).
Ward says in the interview: “So, Ghislaine was the one who phoned these young women’s mother to reassure her how safe they would be, and—because, of course, the poor mother now blames herself terribly for what happened.”
Yet Ward is photographed with Maxwell and Debbie Bancroft attending an after-party for “Easy Virtue” at the Gramercy Park Hotel on May 11, 2009 in New York.
Ward was a Vanity Fair contributor from 2001–2012 and has been connected to Maxwell from at least 2003 to 2009. There is a photo of Carter and Maxwell embracing (photo 6) on March 7, 2007 at an event honoring Cater (oddly, Harvey Weinstein is also in the frame).